Daphne DurhamĪ Conversation Between Tana French and Sophie Hannah Faithful Place is Tana French's best book yet (readers familiar with In the Woods and The Likeness will recognize this as an incredible feat), a compelling and cutting mystery with the hardscrabble, savage Mackey clan at its heart. Because he is too close to the case, and because the Place (including his family) harbors a deep-rooted distrust of cops, Frank must undergo his investigation furtively, using all the skills picked up from years of undercover work to trace the killer and the events of the night that changed his life. They say going home is never easy, but for Frank, investigating the cold case of the just-discovered body of his teenage girlfriend, it is a tangled, dangerous journey, fraught with mean motivations, black secrets, and tenuous alliances. Faithful Place is Frank's old neighborhood, the town he fled twenty-two years ago, abandoning an abusive alcoholic father, harpy mother, and two brothers and sisters who never made it out. That which was buried is brought to light and wreaks hell-on no one moreso than Frank Mackey, beloved undercover guru and burly hero first mentioned in French's second book about the Undercover Squad, The Likeness. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he's willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.Īmazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: The past haunts in Tana French novels. Faithful Place wants him out because he's a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again.

Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Frank took it for granted that she'd dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives.īut on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. ( The hotly anticipated third novel of the Dublin murder squad from the New York Times bestselling authorīack in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city, and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place.

Tana french faithful place review